


Evermore

by Coraleeveritas



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Or as angsty as I get, Songfic, Unspecified Historical Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28554330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coraleeveritas/pseuds/Coraleeveritas
Summary: Jaime could barely remember what life had been like before. He had been stuck with the peculiar feeling that he would never be rid of his unrelenting agony, a grief that would stay with him for the rest of his life, for so many months now that it didn’t make sense that their had been a ‘before’.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 4
Kudos: 58





	Evermore

**Author's Note:**

> Well it’s been a while. 2020 was nearly the year I gave up on writing completely, but a couple of weeks ago I heard Taylor Swift’s song Evermore and this story was born almost immediately. 
> 
> Thank you for Sandwiches for giving me the confidence to share it, even if she didn’t know that’s what she was doing. 
> 
> Anything you recognise doesn’t below to me, but my mistakes surely do.

Jaime could barely remember what life had been like before. He had been stuck with the peculiar feeling that he would never be rid of his unrelenting agony, a grief that would stay with him for the rest of his life, for so many months now that it didn’t make sense that their had been a ‘before’.

Even the weather matched his mood now. Sunny July had cycled round to November without him noticing, his morning walks along the forest trails taking place mostly in the dark for the last few weeks. The grey skies suited him well but December was better, bitter and unforgiving. The forest offered him solitude, a chance to lose himself for a time unlike other places, too many reminding him how his life had been abruptly halved. He still avoided the town where she used to moor their boat, no need to replay the footsteps to find the one where things had gone wrong, the ones he’d decided to take away from her as she sailed out to face the waves on her own. 

They’d searched, of course, when the boat didn’t come back that evening, hope fading when the day had stretched into a week. By the time a second had come and gone, sadness switching to suspicion, Jaime had turned to alcohol, anger and then apathy. Finally embracing the Lannister legacy, he tried to forget what he used to fight for, the love that had slowly crept up to overwhelm him, but every new path he drifted down were filled with lies. 

Catching his frozen breath, staring at the frost dusting everything around him like he’d walked through a window into the wildest of winters, he took in the sight of his latest purchase, a dilapidated wooden cabin. The first time Jaime had ventured into the forest after the tragedy, he’d come across it, hidden from the rest of the world like it had been waiting for him to take apart and rebuild. If he’d had been a poet rather than a banker, then maybe he would have seen it as a sign, a metaphor of sorts, rather than just a project to fill in his free time.

It was here he dreamed of her. Dreams so vivid Jaime could have sworn they were real, dreams that just about got him through one terrible day into the next, promising that there could be more than the melancholy eventually. He didn’t believe in signs or signals, he wasn’t a good enough person to get anything from the gods but letters addressed to their fires but ever so slowly, a glimmer of hope incredibly crept in, like winter turning to spring.

He was replacing floorboards the morning that the news of the found shipwreck rushed through the town, the messenger at the door sending him running barefoot into the snow. On another day the cold would have been enough of a silent threat for him to embrace catching his death, but he barely felt it. He barely felt anything but the jackhammer beating of his heart as he careened around evergreens, slipping and sliding his way back towards civilisation.

Maybe his pain wouldn’t be for evermore after all. 

************** 

Brienne remembered being tossed by the waves for what felt like days, the storm coming out of nowhere and hitting their boat hard. She didn’t have time to feel anything, think anything, instinct and training taking over in the blink of an eye. Deep down, she’d known that pausing in the wrong moment could have cost her more than she was willing to lose. 

It had been her grandfather who’d taught her to sail back when she had been too small to turn the boat by herself, and it was his stories of forgotten wrecks that filled Brienne’s mind before she was dragged under by the violent fury of nature. Catching her breath had felt like taking a step closer to death itself, the Stranger circling her oncoming shipwreck like a shark. Her last thought had been of her irritatingly beautiful husband, the man she loved with all her soul, hoping he would find a path to the truth when she was in pieces at the bottom of the ocean.

Her last thoughts were of him, memories and fantasies as real as if he was right there holding her hand, promising there was a different way out, keeping her steady until the cracks of light started to pull her into the unmistakable scent of summer turning to fall. Her eyes were crusted with sleep, sea salt and sand, her body aching, broken and bruised, but the pounding of her heart spoke volumes on survival against all odds.

The Quiet Isle monks had found her on their beach two days after she’d set out, barely breathing and missing any form of identification. Their doctor, a man who had trained in war zones before choosing a life of isolation, set her arm, patched her torn cheek and brought her back from the brink, taking things day by day, hour by hour. They’d had no regular contact with the outside world, quarterly drops of essentials only coming to supplement what they could grow or make, making Brienne even more of a novelty than in her sleepy seaside town.

Her physical pain ebbed and flowed like ocean waves, but there was more than popped stitches and scar tissue holding up her recovery. Waiting for the next rescue was the slowest form of torture she had ever endured, damsel in distress her most unlikely role to date. The monks sent signals from their old radio, prayers for a brave tourist looking for a new world to explore, just for them to be double crossed and bounce right back.

It didn’t take long for Brienne to change tack and take action. One handed, it took her longer than she would have liked to find a vaguely seaworthy vessel and start on the repairs but determination won out in the end. The fear of what could have been never left her though she buried it deep, rewinding every sign with each job completed, no matter how tiny, sunsets beginning to creep into the afternoon pushing her to finish before the first snowfall of winter.

She finally felt like a line had been crossed, she would stand tall again, and she could go home.

************** 

Jaime no longer trusted his own eyes, but hers had never lied to him. As blue and shimmering as the oceans that had apparently taken her, Brienne stood larger than life at the end of the jetty, surrounded by those who’d written them both off that previous summer.

Her words were gone, his, too, if she could still read her husband right. And when the first tears ran down her cheeks, Brienne opened her arms and Jaime all but ran into them, catching her breath and settling into the familiar feeling of love, for evermore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
